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Splitting a Soul~Chapter 27
Aisling Swift I heard the doors slam behind me and instantly my mind began to generate all kinds of horrible ideas. They were all pretty much confirmed when I circled around and saw that the Gate of Themis had closed behind me with Ash still trapped inside. “Guys, we need to get him out,” I yelled and ushered them to form around me. They looked so tired however that I wondered if either of them could lift their weapons to fire. I still had my ax in hand and began hacking at the doors. “I wouldn’t do that,” the Gatekeeper said to me with that stupid smile of his. It was like that smile was just a big slap in the face. “And why not?!” I shouted back. I hit the doors again and a lightning bolt flew down from the sky and almost hit me, but I jumped back in time. “The gate has a mind of its own, it will release him when it is done with him,” the Gatekeeper informed. “You’ll just have to wait.” “But I hate waiting,” I said and I instantly noticed how whiny that sounded. Faced with no other choice I sat down over by a rock and waited…and waited…and waited. I tried to use the sun to see how much time had passed, but with a sun and a moon in the sky at the same time, I couldn’t judge how accurate it would be. Jack was just as restless as I was, as he in general was even more hyper then I was. He had also been friends with Ash longer then I was by a lot, so he would obviously be worried. He then walked over to the doors and looked them over for a few minutes. “Open Sesame!” Jack shouted. I just rolled my eyes at the idiot, but then the archway rumbled and the doors began to open. “That is awesome; I have magical powers!” “No you don’t; you’re just lucky,” the Gatekeeper said as he rose up. During the time we spent waiting, he had opened up a rock to reveal an entire closet inside. He had pulled out a new outfit and returned to his duties standing in front of the gate as its guardian. “Something is coming out,” Kimi said hopefully and sure enough, Ash came stumbling out of the gateway almost completely unharmed, except for a few cuts and burns. What had caused those? “What happened to you?” Jack asked, looking at the burn makes. “A test,” the Gatekeeper said as if it should answer all of our questions. “The Gate of Themis must challenge all that enter it; it has a mind of its own remember. Sure the test may be different from person to person, but you can’t leave without completing it.” “What was it?” I asked him. I somewhat remembered my own test, but the events from inside the gate were jumbled and I could hardly remember what had truly happened. It was like my mind was at war with itself, seeing things from different angles or something, so I tried not to dwell on it. “I’m not really sure,” Ash said as he rose to his feet. “But I feel a lot better now, like a weight has been lifted.” “Can you all get out of here now? I got to start working on my Lego building,” the Gatekeeper said as he tried to push us back in the carriage that had brought us here and it took us to the small door leading to a hallway full of doors that lead nowhere. “Well that was fun,” Jack said as he snacked on a few ambrosia squares he took from the carriage. “Let’s just get back to camp, we have a lot of planning to do,” Ash commented. For some reason he seemed unusually moody, maybe because of something that happened in the gate. I didn’t know, but I made a mental note to talk to him about it next time we were alone. “Plan for what?” Kimi asked. I wondered that myself so I allowed Ash to answer. “The Elementals are running wild. We need to find the last remaining orbs or the Elementals themselves soon or the world will burn. That means we need to find a way to track Lawrence and retreive the ones he already has,” Ash explained. It made a lot of sense to me, but I wondered if we could do it. Kimi looked nervous too as she took a sudden interest in the floor under her. Jack was the only one that seemed excited by the idea. “Hey if you guys go on crazy missions like this all the time, count me in,” Jack said with a smile as he slipped the last crumb of ambrosia between his lips. The guy was completely nuts and I wondered if maybe Dionysus was still messing with him. I sniffed the air, but the smell of grapes was gone. “You are weird,” Kimi said and everyone let out a chuckle, well except Ash. He had this look on his face like his mind was a million miles away. “So what now?” Jack said excitedly. “I mean we beat the bad guy, saved the girl, and I got eaten by a giant turtle! Now what do we do?” “Well that’s it,” Aisling said. “The quest is over.” “Oh…that is kind of a letdown,” Jack said sadly. “So we just go home?” “That about sums it up,” Kimi added. “We should go our separate ways,” Ash suggested. “We can cover more ground that way.” “Is that the best idea?” I asked. I was good with strategy and I saw the merits of his plan, but I didn’t want to split apart from everyone after we had all just truly met up again. “The Collector and the Elementals are on the move and we need to get as much information on them as we can in a short amount of time,” Ash continued. I found little to argue with and we talked about where we would go. I had agreed to head back to the Olympian Library on my way home before seeing if my parents could help in some way. My dad was the fastest guy I knew and my mom had tons of connections with various Athena demigods that might know something. Ash, Jack, and Kimi would head back to Camp Half-Blood to introduce Jack to the camp, as well as prevent him from making Mr. D angrier. From there, they would ask the Hephaestus cabin about possibly tracking the Collector. Meanwhile the children of Zeus would look for the last remaining of the four powerful Elementals, Air. “Wait wait wait,” Jack said as he turned to me. “How are you getting home? I could drive you, but that is sort of out of our way.” “Don’t worry, I have a ride,” I confirmed. I placed my fingers to my lips and gave out a loud whistle. There was a moment of silence as everyone just kind of looked around. “So…was something supposed to happen?” Jack asked, looking around puzzled. “Just give it a second,” I said as she raised my fingers. Just then I heard a loud roar from off in the distance. I saw my favorite friend rushing toward me. Well my favorite friend that was also monster anyway. “Nala, there you are!” “That thing is the size of my car!” Jack spat out as he was frozen in terror. I thought it was pretty funny to see him freak out like that. “She’s gotten bigger,” Kimi said as she rushed over and gave Nala a quick scratch behind the ear. Nala purred at the attention and I rushed over to scratch her belly. She rolled onto her back like a dog and just allowed us to play with her. “If you have a giant cat that can run across the country, why didn’t you use it before instead of having us drive all over the place?” Jack asked, finally getting over the shock of the situation. “Well carrying four people at once would be too much. Also, someone was being punished for ripping my favorite set of bed sheets,” I said, turning my sternest gave toward Nala. She rolled back onto her stomach and gave me a pair of sad eyes. “You know those don’t work on me. How could you destroy my Rarity bed sheets?” “Who is Rarity?” Ash asked, looking somewhat confused. “Not important,” I argued. “Look at the kitty,” a child said who was standing by the entrance to the Gateway Arch. I then noticed that we were starting to draw a crowd and I wondered if maybe Animal Control were getting phone calls about an escaped lion. I knew it was time to go. “Listen, I should probably go,” I told the others before jumping onto Nala’s back and I grabbed a handful of her fur. Nala however didn’t seem to notice. “Iris Message me if you get any information. I’ll keep looking on my end. Together we can probably work out something. Bye!” I didn’t really give them the chance to say goodbye back; I never did like goodbyes anyway. If you didn’t say goodbye, it is like you never really leave, not completely anyway. Another reason was that I had this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t know what it was, but something was definitely off. I shook it off however, thinking maybe my mind was trying to sort itself out after the interesting few days I had had, almost turning into a vampire or whatever. As Nala went faster, I saw buildings and cities fly past us as we sped up to ludicrous speed and before I knew it I was at the front door of my home. “Thank you Nala, maybe later I’ll give you some catnip,” I told her and she almost roared in appreciation. She was no longer the size of a wolf, but had grown to be about the size of a regular lion. Even when she shrunk down, she was still about the size of a large dog and I couldn’t carry her around in my backpack anymore. Despite this, Nala always came when I called her and she gave me a quick nuzzle before jumping off into a large thicket of trees. “Thought I heard someone out front,” my dad said and I ran over, jumped into the air, and gave him a big hug. “I have so much to tell you!” I told him, planning on telling him everything about my quest before getting down to business. “I can’t wait to hear all about it,” he said and we walked inside. “But maybe you should keep quiet about some of the scarier parts…for your mom that is. I want to hear everything.”